


Time Walker

by secooper87



Category: Avatar (2009), Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Adventure, Canon Compliant, Children of Earth Compliant, F/M, Psychological Torture, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Survivor Guilt, Telepathy, Tenth Doctor Era, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-25
Updated: 2011-12-16
Packaged: 2017-10-26 12:36:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 20,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/283225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/secooper87/pseuds/secooper87
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Na'vi sing of a Time Walker who fought a War that Never Happened. They sing of what the Time Walker hid in the heart of Eywa--something very powerful and very deadly. (Crossover btwn Avatar and Doctor Who)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (rest of the story isn't like this) A transcript -- like in the Avatar movie -- featuring Grace and Jake, discussing the Songs of Never.

**RDA Archives: Transcript from the Mining Colony on Pandora, 2154.  
**

Jake Sully: There was a festival today, something to do with the celebration of life. Neytiri told me they do this every year. She said they celebrate the fact that they are free and have always been free, and that they don't have to hide the way they did during the Days of Necholod.  


I asked her what the Days of Necholod were, but she just gave me that look she always does, you know, when I've said something really stupid. Apparently, there never were any 'Days of Necholod'. That was the reason they were celebrating.

They spent most of the day singing songs and telling stories. They call them the "Songs of Never", because the events they discuss never really happened. There are the songs the kids like—those are the ones about evil demons falling from the sky, trying to destroy all life using dark magic. The kids all joined in. Every time the demons used their evil magic, the kids would all shout, "Scar! Scar!"

Grace Augustine: Ska'a. It means destroy, or wipe out.

Jake Sully: Yeah. That's the word. Ska'a. There was a lot about ska'a. I think the demons came from Ska'a. Or somewhere that sounds like that, at any rate.

There was this other word that kept coming up. I don't know what it means, but it seemed really important. Krrtiranyu. Any idea?

Grace Augustine: It's got to mean something like "Time Walker", but I don't have any idea what that could refer to.

Jake Sully: I don't know. I asked Neytiri, but she said it was hard to explain. She said I wouldn't understand even if she told me. This krrtiranyu thing came up in almost every one of the stories, though. All the older kids are expected to know about it. I asked why, but of course, it's obvious why. It's sacred to Eywa. I mean, I probably should have guessed that.

At the end of the day, I asked Neytiri why they would tell stories about things that never happened. She said the events might not have happened, but they are a part of Eywa, and that makes them real. I think maybe it's some kind of moral tale, to try to teach the kids respect for nature. I asked Neytiri if that was what she meant, but she looked at me like I was an idiot, and said she'd meant exactly what she'd said.

I learned one of the Songs of Never—one of the ones about this krrtiranyu. I wrote it down on this paper, here, hoping that I'd be able to work out a translation later. If I work it out, maybe I can see how to get the Na'vi to leave Hometree, but I don't know. I'm starting to wonder if there isn't something deeper to all this. Something we can't even begin to understand.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jake meets the Doctor.

**Pandora, 2155. One year after the destruction of Hometree.**

It was Norm who first informed them of the approaching ship. "It doesn't even make sense," said Norm. "It takes at least five years to even get a signal back to Earth. They shouldn't even know they need military backup for another four years."

"Which means these guys don't know that things have changed," said Jake Sully. "That'll make things easy for us. We'll let them know things are different—that the company's bankrupt and they're not getting paid—and they'll probably just turn around and leave without giving us any trouble."

"I told them that when they established radio contact a few minutes ago," said Norm. "They informed me that they were aware of the current situation, and that they requested our immediate surrender. Apparently, the RDA is determined to squeeze every penny out of a bad situation."

Jake Sully swished his tail around, the way he always did now when he was irritated. Because he had only acquired the tail a year ago, the action often caused more chaos than it was worth, but he still liked doing it. It reminded him that he was different now, and that he had a new life and a new purpose.

"Right," he said. "I'll round up the others. We'll be on high alert. When are they scheduled to touch down?"

"I have no idea," said Norm. "The ship has some complicated cloaking device that I can't make heads or tails of. If they hadn't radioed in ahead of time, I'd never have known they were there at all."

Jake felt his head spinning. "But that means…"

"Yeah," said Norm. "They might be here already."

Those words echoed through Jake's head during his flight back to Fe'nantang, his new home. With Hometree gone, the Omaticaya clan had resettled around the Hallelujah Mountains, and as he guided the Turok around the floating landscapes, he wondered if he'd ever be able to make this journey without smelling the sulfur and fire and death of the battle he had fought here.

Neytiri ran over to him before he had even landed, and before he could open his mouth to tell her what Norm had said, she gave voice to all of his worst fears.

"There's been a sighting," Neytiri told him. "An unknown tawtute in the forests by the remains of Hometree."

Jake's eyes went wide. So much for the last shred of hope that he could talk these guys around. There was only one reason for an unknown human to be wandering around that area of the forest, and it wasn't to study the local wildlife.

"Norm was right," said Jake. "They really have come back to pick up where they left off."

He dismounted and turned to Neytiri. "Summon the others," he said. "It's time to drive these humans out just like we did before."

But of course, things were never that simple. Not on Pandora.

* * *

The scout pointed over to the abandoned schoolhouse. "He went in there," the scout told Jake, "but he's been wandering around the forest for about a half a day now. I'm not sure why the animals haven't attacked him yet—they've been circling him since he arrived."

Neytiri peered in through the window, and made a face. "He doesn't look like a tawtute," she said. "He doesn't have…" she touched the area around the edges of her face, miming the exopacks that humans required to breathe whenever they ventured onto the surface of Pandora.

"That's not usually what humans look like," said Jake. "Norm said they had some fancy new space ship—maybe they brought different kinds of exopacks, too." He joined Neytiri by the window and looked inside.

The man was definitely human. Pink skin, no tail, probably tallish by human standards (although short compared to the Na'vi), very thin, dressed in a brown pinstripe suit, a long, tan trench coat, and red sneakers. Nothing terribly remarkable about this particular human either—he was youngish, with spiky brown hair and a rather boyish face, and, at the moment, a pair of black glasses perched on his nose. No weapons that Jake could see (although that didn't mean anything), but Jake figured he could take him in a fight. Hell, Jake figured he could have taken the guy down in a fight even back when he was in the wheelchair.

No exopack, though—not in any way, shape, or form. Nothing to even indicate that he had an exopack on his person, either. The suit was tight fitting; there weren't a whole lot of places he'd be able to hide it. And technology couldn't have changed that much since the last time Jake had been on Earth.

In retrospect, that should have been the first warning sign.

Jake raised the gun he'd taken with him, and gestured for the others to follow him into the schoolroom. They weren't being stealthy or cautious about their advance, and with the amount of noise that they were making, Jake had assumed that the man would swing around, brandishing a sidearm. But the man didn't turn around. In fact, he didn't seem to notice that they were in the room at all. He just stood beside a table, flipping through a picture book as if he hadn't a care in the world.

After a minute of waiting for a reaction that was never coming, Jake cocked the gun. "Hey you," he said. "Hands up and turn around slowly."

The man didn't put his hands up. He just dropped the book back onto the table, took off his spectacles, and turned around, a charming smile on his face. "Hope you don't mind, just popped in to…" the man said, but he trailed off as his eyes landed on Jake's gun. He raised one eyebrow. "Now, that's definitely not right," he said. He stuck his hands in his pockets. "That actually work?"

Jake waved the gun in a vaguely threatening way, but the man seemed no less fearful than he had been when he was reading that picture book—the Three Little Pigs? Jake cleared his throat. "It can still blow off your head if you don't cooperate," he snapped. "Hands up. Now!"

The man gave a small, annoyed sigh, and put his hands up in the official gesture of surrender. Jake felt a little bit better.

"Now, what are you doing on Pandora?" he demanded.

"Pandora?" the man asked.

"Yeah, Pandora," said Jake. "You know. The planet you're on? Pandora?"

If anything, this pronouncement seemed to make the stranger even more annoyed than before. His eyes darted over to the Na'vi who were congregating behind Jake. He gave them a sideways smile, and pointed at Jake.

"Bit thick, this one. Isn't he?" the man said, in fluent Na'vi.

Neytiri's eyes grew wide. Jake's jaw dropped. Judging by the silence that pervaded the room, the others were similarly flummoxed.

And then everything seemed to happen all at once.

Neytiri cried out. Jake spun around, just in time to see one of the younger Na'vi loose an arrow from his bow—probably more from fear of the unknown than from any coherent thought. The arrow whizzed past Jake's arm, heading straight for the stranger's heart, and at this range, there was no way the man would be able to duck in time.

And then there was a crash, and the splintering of wood, and Jake was thrown to the ground with a force that took the breath right out of his lungs. He turned around, gasping, and then blinked. A large tree branch had fallen through the roof, splitting the schoolhouse in half and landing only a foot away from Jake. The arrow that had been headed for the man's chest was imbedded in the fallen tree branch.

That man must have the luck of the devil.

"He's gone," said Neytiri, dragging Jake to his feet. "The tawtute! He's run off." She didn't have to tell Jake what that meant. He knew exactly what that meant. The man would find the others in his party and warn them. Jake cursed. He'd been hoping to use the man as a hostage, maybe figure out some way to broker an agreement and avoid the upcoming battle. But without the man, there was little hope left.

"Split up," he told the others. "Find him!"

And they did, darting into the trees as swiftly and gracefully as they had the first time Jake had seen them. Jake got up from the floor, and looked for Neytiri, but it seemed that she, like the others, had gone off in pursuit of the unknown human. He went over to the tree branch, staring at it. It was so completely improbable that it would just happen to snap at that moment…

But Neytiri had told him at least a thousand times that Eywa didn't work like that. She didn't take sides, didn't rock the boat. She had only intervened once that Jake knew of, and that had been when the entire planet was at stake.

A flash of tan distracted him. Jake's head shot up, and he caught a glimpse of a tan trench coat darting through the forest. Jake left the schoolroom, and immediately started running after it, but it disappeared. Then he saw it again, out of the corner of his eye, and kept running. Jake chased the guy, as best he could, through the forest. Normal human guy like that — Jake wasn't really sure why the guy kept outrunning him. He stopped, looked around. He'd lost him again. Damn. But, no, wait, there he was again, that tan trench coat, darting across a tree trunk which spanned a violent river.

Jake ran to the river, his feet pounding on the tree trunk, when he slipped, and realized that there was no possible way he could catch himself in time. The gun fell from his hands and landed in the water below. He felt the rush of wind around his ears, and prayed the water was deep enough that his injuries wouldn't be too bad, and even though he knew it was futile, he reached out to grab at the air in some vain hope that he'd find a vine or branch that he could hang on to. And then his hand caught on something. He clutched at it, as he felt himself stop falling.

It was another hand. A human hand.

He looked up, and found himself staring into the deep brown eyes of the man he had been chasing. This man—this skinny, insignificant human man—was somehow managing to support his weight without breaking a sweat.

"Up you come," he said, in his cheerful, British sounding voice. "Sure you can find some leverage, what with that big tail of yours. Blimey, they didn't half splice you up, did they? Didn't even think to link the alternate potentiality vectors, makes you a bit fuzzy round the edges. Bet she'll love it, though. New challenge. Always loves a challenge, clever young thing like her."

Slowly, with the help of Jake's tail, the man managed to lever Jake up onto the tree trunk, where Jake nearly toppled over again, but caught himself just in time.

"Woah!" said the man. "Easy does it. One step at a time. You'll be paralyzed from the waist down if you keep this up."

Jake stared at the man as the two made it to the other side of the river. He felt his breath coming more rapidly than before. "What… how… who…?" he asked, raising his hands in the air. He swallowed, then tried again. "It's not that easy to kill a Na'vi, you know," he blurted, before he had time to think.

The man quirked an eyebrow at him. "I know," he said. "What makes you think I want to kill you?"

Jake spluttered for an answer, but couldn't work out how to vocalize one. It was something about the man's eyes, something that made Jake want to cower in fear. He could see so much death in those eyes, so much darkness.

"Do you often feel like people are trying to kill you?" the strange man asked. "Is this persecution complex a recent phenomena or just since you got that new body?" He gave a sudden grin. "Humans. Basic double helix DNA, about 2.6 nanometers wide, based on alternating phosphate and sugar residues. Four bases: adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine, following a basic three dimensional structure across one potential reality vector. Bit of a challenge, working out how to gain that molecular resonance thing you have going in the native life forms, but, well…" He trailed off, the lightness draining from his face. "War's over, at any rate," he muttered. He paused, letting the wind run through his hair, rustling the leaves on the trees surrounding them. Then, out of nowhere, the man laughed—a light, musical sort of laughter, and all his darkness vanished. "Oi, cheeky, that's what you are."

Jake looked around, trying to work out who the guy was talking to. Of course, he might just be talking into some sort of hidden radio, but why would human genetics be important to a group of soldiers? And what did he mean, the war was over? Had Earth been involved in some war he didn't know about while he'd been away? Or had these soldiers already begun their attack somewhere else on the planet, and believed the hard part was over?

"What war?" asked Jake, trying to keep the anxiety out of his voice.

The man examined him carefully, and there was something ancient in those brown eyes, now, something very old and very sad and oh, so dangerous. Jake caught himself shuddering. Then the man beamed, and offered his hand. "Hello," he said. "I'm the Doctor."

Right. 'The Doctor'. Codename, perhaps? Some special agent? Maybe the result of a genetic experiment to create a human who could breathe the air on Pandora? Jake shook the hand with trepidation. "Jake," he said. "Jake Sully."

"Nice to meet you, Jake Sully," said the Doctor. He nodded at someone over Jake's shoulder. "And who's your friend?"

Jake looked behind him as Neytiri stepped out of the bushes, a bow and arrow in her hands. She was staring at the Doctor with a look of anger on her face, and a clear threat in her eyes.

"Neytiri?" he asked. "What are you doing here?"

Neytiri glared at the Doctor. "He is like the Turok," she said. "I've seen what he has been doing to you."

"No," Jake protested. "I was chasing him. I just sort of slipped, and he…"

"I saw," said Neytiri, drawing her bow up and pointing an arrow at the Doctor. "I saw him run ahead and wait for you to catch up. He drew you away from the others the way a hunter draws an animal from its herd."

"Oh, brilliant," said the Doctor. "Agile, harmonically balanced, and clever to boot. Oh, well done. Very well done."

A woodsprite glided along the wind, its glowing pink tendrils pulsing in the breeze, as it drifted towards the small group. Jake remembered when he had first encountered these woodsprites, back when Neytiri first found him. He remembered how they had surrounded him, covering him from head to foot, a sign that Eywa had favored him.

The passing woodsprite landed briefly on the Doctor's shoulder, and the Doctor gave it a gentle pat. "Don't let it get to your head," he admonished, brushing it away.

The gesture made Neytiri almost growl with anger, and she advanced on him, brandishing the bow in much the same way that Jake had his gun. And just as before, the Doctor didn't seem in the least bit afraid.

"You breathe the air," said Neytiri. "You can outrun a full grown Leytrinsi. You caught Jakesully as if he weighed nothing." She scowled at him. "A tawtute cannot do these things!" she shouted.

"You're right," said the Doctor. "They can't."

Neytiri faltered at this. She let the tension in the bow relax, as her hand dropped to her side. "You…" she said. "You're not…"

The Doctor gave her a smile—a real, genuine smile, a smile that was warm and gentle, like the sun drifting amongst the clouds. "No," he told her. "I'm not."

"He must be some sort of experiment," Jake said. "Or a mutant or something."

The Doctor gave an exasperated sigh. "Oh yes," he said. "Definitely thick." He looked Jake over again, as if trying to dissect him with his eyes. "I can't imagine what she sees in you."

"I have lots of good qualities, I'll have you know," said Jake. Then, after seeing Neytiri's offended countenance, he added, "and _she_ has a name, you know."

"Yes, she does," said the Doctor. "And that name is Eywa, not Pandora. Try to get it right."


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor explains how he knows Eywa, discovers the remains of Hometree.

There was a moment of complete silence, in which Jake and Neytiri just stared at the Doctor, hoping the situation would suddenly become clear in their minds. Then they both started speaking at once, in different languages, and in such raised tones that their voices reverberated throughout the forest.

"How do you know about that?" Jake demanded. "What are you hiding? You think a few nice words and a handshake is going to make up for everything that's happened? You really think you can just pick up again where you left off?"

At the same time, in Na'vi, Neytiri shouted, "What do you know about Eywa? Are you mocking us? You think she isn't real, don't you? You think she's just rock and soil!"

The Doctor held out his hands. "Woah, woah, woah! One at a time." He turned to Neytiri. "Right. Neytiri first. Well, to answer your questions in order: basically everything, not intentionally, and of course she's real. Who do you think I've been talking to since I got here?"

He spun around, coattails flying, and faced Jake. "And as for your questions. Met Eywa about… what is it? Mid twenty second century? Must be seven million years ago, now. Few nice words and a handshake never did anyone any harm. And as for picking up where I left off…" a shadow crossed his face. "Couldn't if I wanted to," he said. "So I suppose that answers that."

"Seven million years ago?" Jake asked.

"Bout that long," mused the Doctor. "Fairly young for a planet. She's still just a child in so many ways." He paused, then chuckled. "I heard that, young lady. Don't you go denying it."

"You can't do that," insisted Neytiri. "You can't just hear her like that. Eywa doesn't do that."

The Doctor pointed at his head. "Wireless connection," he said. He looked at the blank expressions on Jake and Neytiri's faces. "Right. 22nd century. Never mind." He reached into his pocket and produced a thin metal tube. He pressed a few buttons, and the tip lit up blue. He beamed. "That-a-way, I think," he said, darting off into the distance. "Keep up!"

Jake and Neytiri looked at one another, then ran after him, trying to keep up.

"That tree branch," said Jake, "I knew that wasn't an accident. That was Eywa, wasn't it? She was trying to save his life."

"Eywa doesn't pick sides," Neytiri informed him. "She can't just do things like that, and she wouldn't—not to save one life." She scanned the way ahead, spotted the tan coat to her right, and dragged Jake along the correct course. "I don't understand what he is," she said.

"He's just… some guy from that ship," said Jake.

"He's not tawtute," said Neytiri.

"But he looks human."

"And the dreamwalkers looked like the Na'vi."

Jake blinked. "What, you think he's an avatar?"

"No," said Neytiri. She frowned. "But he's different. There's something about him. I feel like I should remember him from somewhere…"

But before Jake could ask her to explain, they nearly collided with the back of a tan trench coat. Just beyond him, Jake could make out the large clearing of dust and ash that was once Hometree, along with a few destroyed pieces of mining machinery.

He could still smell the death that lingered in the air.

The sight of that area stirred up such vivid memories, it took Jake a while to realize that the Doctor was talking—muttering something so quietly that his words were nearly lost in the wind.

"No," he was saying. "No, no, no, no, no."

He took a few steps forward, his metal wand humming in his hand. He stopped, stood amongst the ashy ground, a cold wind winding through his hair. He looked down and examined the metal tube in his hand.

"Hairline fracture," he said. "I suppose that's how they got through."

He put away the metal tube, and Jake could see his hands shaking by his side. He was still muttering something under his breath, something that sounded like, "should have been able to stop this," and "shouldn't even be possible."

"I was there," said Jake. "When it happened. We both were." He looked over at Neytiri, into her beautiful golden eyes that shone with unshed tears. "There was nothing we could do."

The Doctor turned on Jake. "Who did this?" he demanded.

"The tawtute," Neytiri said.

The Doctor ignored her. "Who did this, Jake?"

"Like she said, humans," Jake told him.

The Doctor took a step forward, and Jake found himself instinctively taking a step back. Neytiri was right—the Doctor really did remind him of a Turok.

"Which humans, Jake?" asked the Doctor.

"The RDA," said Jake. "It's a mining corporation… back on Earth."

The Doctor looked at Jake, the cold fury still in his eyes. Then he looked back over his shoulder—at the remains of the mining equipment that still lay amongst the ashy ground, and took a long, shaky breath.

"I trusted you," said the Doctor, very softly.

The forest around them seemed to quiver slightly, tree branches swaying, animals scurrying off in the distance, the rumble of the distant river hesitating in its cacophony.

The Doctor stared up at the trees. "I said I trusted you!" he shouted. "You hear me? I trusted you to keep them out. Do you have any idea what's been happening out there? Do you know what you've done?" His entire body was shaking now with barely suppressed fury. "You could have stopped this. You could have stopped this all from happening. You could have saved Donna!"

"Stop it, stop it, stop it!" Neytiri shouted. She grabbed his shoulders, and shook him. "I don't know who you are, but you can't speak to her like that. You don't speak to her like that!" She looked into his deep, furious eyes. "You say you know Eywa, but you don't. She isn't some child you can scold. She is the balance, the life force, the spiritual center. She does not interfere."

The Doctor's anger melted into confusion, and his eyebrows raised. "Since when?"

"Since always," said Neytiri. "Since the dawn of time."

The Doctor blinked. "That's not right," he said, extricating himself from Neytiri's hold. "No, no, no, that's not right at all." He ran a hand through his hair. "Something's gone wrong—been going wrong—for longer than Neytiri's people can remember. She's not usually this quiet or passive. Not when she knows what's at stake."

"How can you know?" said Neytiri. "You, who claim you speak with Eywa, even though you have not connected with her. Who are you to say what Eywa is like?"

The Doctor waved his hand in the air. "And all this is natural, then, is it? The products of a natural evolutionary cycle? Every biosphere on this planet is radically different, and yet somehow, the plants and wildlife are consistent. Does that sound like survival of the fittest to you?" He surveyed Neytiri carefully. "And you. Your entire genetic makeup. Your skeletal structure, the molecular resonance patterns in your nervous system. The Na'vi are the only race in the universe who can be shot point blank by a Dalek and walk away unscathed. Do you really think that Eywa had no part in that?"

"What's a Dalek?" asked Jake.

The entire forest seemed to shudder at the word, and even Neytiri felt a shiver go up her spine, although she couldn't explain why. Jake and Neytiri looked around in bewilderment.

The Doctor didn't answer, just stuck his hands in his pockets. All the tension in his body was gone, all the anger and rage seemed to have disappeared. But the newfound ease did not seem to reach his eyes. "Right! Well, then! A hairline fracture in the outer layer of temporal shielding to mend, a state of grace circuit to repair, a mining company to destroy, a universe to save. Allons-y !"

He turned and started to head off, but stopped when he noticed that Neytiri and Jake were not following him. "Right," he said. "Translation circuits are blocked here. Keep forgetting that. Come on!"

"Where are we going?" asked Neytiri.

"Main Psychic Control Center," said the Doctor. He must have noticed the blank looks on their faces. "You know. Big, tall. Looks sort of like a tree with shiny, glowy bits coming out the top."

"The Tree of Souls?" asked Neytiri.

The Doctor gave her a large, manic grin. "Aw, you lot call it the Tree of Souls?" he said. "That's brilliant is what it is." He turned again, his coat swishing out around his legs. "Come on!"

"I think you might be a bit turned around," said Jake. "The Tree of Souls is…" He stopped when he caught the expression on Neytiri's face. They both knew they weren't heading in the right direction, and Neytiri was clearly hoping that it stayed that way. Jake remembered how long it took to build up enough trust with the Omaticayan clan that he was allowed to visit. He was sure that, if Neytiri had her way, this Doctor would never make it within two miles of the sacred tree.

The Doctor was skimming the edge of the devastated wilderness, examining the local flora and fauna with an intensity that even Grace had not exhibited. Every so often, he would stop, lick his index finger, raise it into the air, and then dart off in some new direction.

"Idiot," muttered Neytiri. "He has no idea where he's going."

"Bit tricky to find your way around when the secondary control conduit is in ashes," came the Doctor's voice. He stopped, right in front of a rather squat Dandetiger tree. He beamed. "Oh, there you are!" He gestured towards Jake and Neytiri. "Come on, come on. Bunch up. It doesn't have that large a range."

Jake and Neytiri looked at one another, but stepped forward, humoring the man. He winked up at them, and pulled out the metal tube from his pocket. "Hold on tight," he said, although he never said to what.

"What are you...?" Jake began, but before he could continue, he was surrounded by a sudden blinding light, and the world seemed to spin around him.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At the Tree of Souls, the Doctor explains the truth about unobtainium. And discovers why he's still alive after the Time War.

Jake blinked. He didn't believe his eyes, so he shut them, shook his head, and opened them again.

"What?" he shouted.

Neytiri seemed just as dazed and confused as he was. She was rubbing at her eyes, as if willing them to work properly, because what was in front of them could not possibly be real.

The only one who seemed unphased by all of this was, of course, the Doctor. He had that same big grin on his face as he put his hands back into his pockets and nodded at the sight in front of them. "There we are. Tree of Souls."

Something clicked in Jake's head. "That's like… a teleport or something. Like in that classic Earth TV show. Star Trip."

"Star Trek," the Doctor corrected. "And no, technically, it's a short range translocation module built on a set of osculating reality flux variants. She put them in a few million years ago. Trying to be clever, I daresay."

Jake just stared at him, completely dumbfounded. "What?"

The Doctor sighed, then gestured at Neytiri. "Ask her. She's clearly the one with the brains in your relationship."

Jake looked over at Neytiri, but she wasn't paying attention. She had worked out where they were and what had happened, and she could see where the Doctor was headed. She gave a sharp, angry cry, and picked the Doctor up by the arms, dangling him in front of her.

"Don't you dare!" she shouted at him. "Don't you dare think of destroying the Tree of Souls."

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "Destroy it?" he asked. "Me? All by my lonesome?"

It was, Jake thought, a fair point. Unless that little metal tube thing was actually some death laser in disguise, there was no way that he'd be able to do anything to the tree.

"You'll tell the others," Neytiri insisted. "And they'll bring their demons and balls of fire and destroy it."

"Really? Knock down the Tree of Souls with just some high grade explosives? I doubt that," said the Doctor. "You could drop an atomic bomb on that thing and it wouldn't have a scratch." He tilted his head to the side. "Well, maybe one scratch. Nasty thing, hydrogen explosions. Fallout wouldn't do you lot any favors either."

"You lie," said Neytiri. "That isn't possible."

"Well," the Doctor said, stretching out the word as if he were tasting every syllable, "thing is, you call it the Tree of Souls, and it looks like a tree, but we both know it's not really a tree at all." He gave her a pointed look. "Don't we, Neytiri?"

Jake was beginning to wonder whether anything in his life would ever make sense again. "Huh?"

Neytiri hesitated, eying the Doctor suspiciously. But she didn't negate the absurd statement he'd just put forward.

"You can feel it, Neytiri," said the Doctor, in a soft, soothing voice. "I know you can feel it, even when you aren't directly connected to the psionic matrix. You know what the Tree of Souls really is. You might not be able to put it into words, but that doesn't mean you don't understand it." He gave her a calm, steady gaze. "I'm not here to hurt Eywa, Neytiri. I'm here to help." He looked straight into her eyes, with such an honest countenance that Jake wondered how he could ever have doubted this man. "Do you believe me, Neytiri?"

"Yes," said Neytiri, in a voice that was almost a whisper. Slowly, gently, she put the Doctor down on the ground.

Jake, meanwhile, was staring at the Tree of Souls. "What do you mean, it's not a tree? Of course it's a tree. It looks like a tree. It feels like a tree. It's made of wood."

"Yes, and the Tardis is just a 1960's Police Box," said the Doctor, as he proceeded towards the Tree of Souls.

Jake turned to Neytiri. "You can't just let him…" he trailed off. Neytiri was staring at the Doctor with something akin to awe. "Neytiri?"

"I know who he is," she said. "He is Tai'Nandi. The Lonely God."

"I don't… what?"

Neytiri's eyes never left the retreating form of the Doctor. "In the beginning, there was chaos. And then came Tai'Nandi and the Tardis, and they looked at the chaos and said no more. And so Eywa was born."

"Oh, come on," said Jake. "The guy can't be out of his thirties. This whole Eywa thing must have started millions of years ago…" He stopped, and remembered. "Seven million years ago," he said.

"He is krrtiranyu—a Time Walker," said Neytiri. "We sing of him in the Songs of Never. He steps through history, helping those in need."

In the distance, the Doctor had reached the base of the Tree of Souls. He reached out his hand to touch the trunk, and something appeared in the wood. Something that opened. A door.

Jake blinked. "Not really a tree," he repeated to himself, but he still couldn't quite believe it. He turned to Neytiri. "If it's not a tree, then what is it?"

Neytiri opened her mouth, stopped, then tried again. "It's… big… something too large to comprehend… it's everything and nothing, the zephyr and the storm, that which happened and that which never did. It's…"

"Eywa?" Jake tried.

"No," said Neytiri. "No, it's just… what it is."

Jake could see the door was still open, but he couldn't see what lay inside. "Right," he said. "I'm going in."

Neytiri caught his arm, and for a moment, Jake was certain she was going to stop him. But she hesitated, then dropped it, and nodded. Jake gave her a reassuring smile, then turned around and ran towards the base of the tree. "Lonely God, huh?" he said. "Time Walker? Gotta be worth a look."

When he approached the tree, the door was still propped open, which meant that someone was expecting him. He didn't know if it was Eywa or the Doctor or something else he didn't even begin to understand, but he knew he'd die of curiosity if he didn't take a look. So, standing up straight and tall, as if he weren't afraid in the slightest, Jake opened the door and stepped inside.

He blinked.

He stepped back out, and ran around the tree, measuring it with his hands. Then he went back in again. "That's… impossible," he said. "It's… it's..."

"Bigger on the inside?" asked the Doctor, who was crouched by a mechanical console by the far wall, about fifty feet away.

Bigger on the inside didn't quite cut it. It wasn't just spacious, it was impossible. The Tree of Souls was on the smaller side, in terms of trunk width. Yet this room felt more like Hometree had before it was destroyed—cavernous and gigantic. It was covered, wall to wall, with machinery the likes of which Jake had never seen before. The walls themselves were not wooden—not even close. Jake touched them, just to be sure.

"It's unobtainium," he said. "This whole thing is built out of unobtainium!"

The Doctor looked up from his work on the console. "Unob-what?"

Jake knocked on the wall. "Unobtainium," said Jake. He stared at it. "You've been mining the planet. A competing company. That's why you're really here, isn't it? You know how much it's worth. You're just trying to get the unobtainium for yourself!"

The Doctor stood up, staring at Jake as if he'd just dribbled down his shirt. He walked over, and knocked on the wall, mimicking Jake. "This," he said. " _This_ is unobtainium?" He gave it another tap. "This stuff? Valuable?"

"It's… well, yeah," said Jake. "Worth millions."

" _This_ stuff?"

"Yes."

The Doctor burst out laughing.

Jake felt slightly offended. "It has very important scientific properties," he insisted. "It's a superconductor with a strong magnetic field. It's a stable quasi-crystal with a fivefold symmetry. It can power starships!"

"Got that out of a pamphlet, did you?" asked the Doctor.

Jake said nothing, because that was exactly where he'd gotten the information. In fact, he couldn't understand half of what he said.

"Do you know what this stuff is?" asked the Doctor. He tapped it again. "It's packing peanuts."

Jake stared at him. "What?"

"Well, technically it's a temporal and psychic field dampener," explained the Doctor. "Able to filter and suppress any spare time dilation frequencies echoing back through the vortex. They use it as packing peanuts for time technology. Not that hard to make, actually. Costs, maybe, 25 credits per metric ton at the start of the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire, if I remember correctly. Causes a big pollution problem in the distant future. I know a lot of people in the year 4.5/Apple/19 who would pay a small fortune to get rid of the stuff."

"But… it powers starships," Jake protested.

"Ah," said the Doctor, putting his hands in his pockets. "Yes it does. And therein lies the crux of the problem. Because your standard—unobtainium, did you call it? Your standard manufactured unobtainium alloy can _not_ , as you say, power starships. But the unobtainium you mine from Eywa can."

"So this stuff is some sort of variation?" Jake guessed.

"Unobtainium is a temporal and psychic filter," the Doctor told him. "Its properties are not based on its molecular structure. Its properties are based on what it is filtering."

Jake started to realize what the Doctor was hinting at. "So you're saying that whatever is being filtered on Pandora—"

"Eywa," corrected the Doctor. "Take it from me, you don't want to upset the sentient being you're living on. Last time I upset the Tardis, she made me run a mile to get to the nearest loo."

"Whatever is being filtered on this planet is what's making the unobtainium valuable," Jake concluded. "So what's the unobtainium filtering?"

The Doctor never answered. He just sauntered off to the console he had previously been crouched behind, pried off another panel, and began buzzing it with the metal tube.

"Is it Eywa?" asked Jake. "Is she what's making the unobtainium so powerful?"

"Nah, wrong kind of energy," said the Doctor. "Eywa may be stochastically inclined, but she's hardly what you'd call a full blown time sensitive."

"Sto-what?"

"Stochastic," said the Doctor. "Able to tell the future. Well, able to determine the future based on long term probabilities and short term causal echoes."

"So Eywa… is a computer? Some sort of artificial intelligence?" Jake asked, eying the machines suspiciously. He felt a small electric shock run through the wall that he was touching. "Ow!"

"Sentient planet, actually," said the Doctor. "All this is just to let her access the outside world, make sure she isn't trapped inside her head. Calling her a computer would be like calling you… oh, I don't know… a wheelchair." He gave Jake a pointed look, and Jake shut up. "Usually she's able to fix these systems for herself, but something seems to have gone wrong and she won't tell me what."

The Doctor put the panel back on the console, and got back to his feet. "Right. State of grace circuits are now fully functional. Oh, and fixed the shielding around the Main Psychic Control—sorry, Tree of Souls. Seems to have rotted out a few centuries back, so we're lucky no one's dropped any atomic bombs here yet. Now, let's see what we can do about that hairline temporal fracture."

As he darted over to another console in the room, Jake began to give the room a more careful examination. Most of the room was filled with machinery, and not the sort of machinery he was used to back on Earth. These machines were humming, filling the air with a low, soft music. The unobtainium of the walls didn't look glaring or garish, but seemed to fill the air with a soft, luminescent glow that illuminated the room. To the far end of the room, he could see another door, a little smaller than the door that led inside the Tree of Souls, but large enough that Jake thought he could get through it if he ducked.

It was a living area. Some beds sat in the corner, books lined the walls, and a large table lay in the center of the room. He stepped inside, and was able to stand up straight without hitting his head on the ceiling. He wandered around, looking at the various items scattered throughout the room. Pieces of Earth-style clothing. Gadgets he was certain he couldn't identify. Drawings and sketches hanging on the walls.

And then he stepped into a corner, and stopped abruptly.

It wasn't a photograph, or a movie or even a hologram. It was… the impression of a person that surrounded him. A feeling, as if she were right there, just out of eyesight, and if he were to turn around he would see her. It was such a strong impression, he felt as if he knew her intimately—her enthusiasm and excitement, that spark of delight that lingered in her eyes, her adamant determination, her love of life—these traits surrounded him, dancing in and out of his perceptions.

Who was this?

It wasn't Eywa—he didn't understand how he knew that, but that much was clear to him. It was a girl, humanoid but not human, young and full of life, someone who loved others and was well loved in return.

Jake could hear the sounds of familiar voices echoing through the open doors, and ducked out of the room. He went back to the cavernous space where the Doctor was still working.

"Yeah, I get that a lot," said the Doctor to Neytiri, who was still gawking at the size of the room she had entered. "It's dimensionally transcendental."

"You are the one from the stories," said Neytiri. "Tai'Nandi. The father of Eywa."

The Doctor stiffened as Neytiri said the name. His entire face became blank, his posture completely devoid of emotion. "Don't call me that," he said.

"That is what Eywa calls you," said Neytiri. "Is that not who you are?"

"No," said the Doctor. "Not anymore." He looked up at her, his face completely emotionless. "You can't really call yourself 'Grandfather' when your granddaughter is dead."

And suddenly, Jake knew who the girl in the other room had been.

"Then what do I call you?" asked Neytiri.

The Doctor suddenly broke into a large smile that didn't seem to reach his eyes. "Told you before. I'm the Doctor." He ran around to the other side of the console and started buzzing at things with his metal tube.

Neytiri just looked at him, as if trying to figure him out. "Eywa is frightened," said Neytiri.

"Well, that's easy enough to fix," said the Doctor. "Just gotta reconfigure the organic matrix to stitch up the wound and she'll be able to heal herself in no time. No more evil pepperpots for you lot."

Neytiri shook her head. "She's frightened about you," she said. "Something about knocking."

The Doctor paused. "Right. Slightly stochastic." He took a deep breath, then went on with his work as if nothing had bothered him. "There we go," he said. "Gave her a few stitches across the wound, and if we're lucky, that'll heal her up in no time. Bit of rock and debris might fall through the crack, but, well, not much harm in that. Now, what's really wrong with you, young lady?"

He went to the doughnut-shaped machine in the center of the room, and started tapping on some monitors. "Well, energy fluctuations seem to be… hold on a tic." He pulled out the black framed glasses he'd been wearing earlier from his pocket, and tapped on the monitor a few times. "That's not right," he muttered. "You shouldn't be experiencing power drains like that, well, ever. What have you been doing with yourself, young lady?"

He glanced over at the wall, as if waiting for an answer, then frowned.

"What did she say?" said Jake.

"Nothing," said the Doctor. "She seems remarkably reticent on the subject." He tapped a few things down on the machine below the monitor. "Might be a problem with the… well, let's see if I can pinpoint when that happened, hm?" He squinted at the screen, tapped a few more buttons, then squinted again. "Half a million years ago. Fairly recent. And I hid the… you know, the thing I hid, when did I do that? Must be before the power drain, so that can't be it." He took his glasses off, and squeezed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger. "Half a million years ago," he muttered. "Half a million years ago. What happened half a million years ago? Think, think, thi—"

His eyes widened, and his arms fell down by his side. His face went blank, almost as blank as it had when Neytiri had called him Tai'Nandi. He just stared at the monitor as if he weren't really seeing it, as if he were somewhere far away, seeing some other scene playing out before his eyes.

"So that was you, was it?" said the Doctor, softly, flatly, dully. "After everything I told you, after everything I taught you, in spite of all my warnings and protests, you went and used it anyways. Soaked the rock in temporal residue and drained your power supply." He paused, breathing heavily. Jake wasn't sure whether he was about to fly into a rage or burst into tears. But the Doctor did neither. "Was it worth it?" he asked in the same dull, flat tone. "Was it worth the risk?"

He waited as if listening for a response, and shook his head. "No, I'm not," he said. "And you, of all people, should know why."

And without another word, he left the Tree of Souls.

Jake looked at Neytiri, assuming she'd be as lost and confused as he was. But he could tell from the sad expression in her eyes that she knew exactly what the Doctor had meant. "What happened a half a million years ago?" he asked her.

"Eywa opened the doors of time," said Neytiri, "and saved Tai'Nandi from the fires of Hell."


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neytiri discovers what the Doctor did during the Time War. Jake, the Doctor, and Neytiri all assemble at Fe'nantang.

Soon, the sun had set, and the forests were filled with the bioluminescence of plants and the scuffling of nocturnal predators. And still, they had not found the Doctor. Neytiri held her bow at the ready, and Jake was brandishing a small knife. He wished he had his gun. He could still remember his first night in these forests, when he was lost and alone, with no weapons and no knowledge of the Pandoran wildlife. He could remember how he had been surrounded and nearly killed by the bad wolves who searched for easy prey. He wondered whether they would find the Doctor alive.

Neytiri stopped, suddenly, and Jake nearly ran into her back. She pointed. Straight ahead, they could make out a small figure sitting beneath a tree, floating woodsprites surrounding him at a distance, as if afraid to touch him. As if, Jake realized, Eywa were a little girl, afraid of her dad's anger but desperately needing a hug.

Neytiri motioned for Jake to stay put, and gave him her bow. Then she went over and sat beside the Doctor. For a while, they said nothing, just stared out into the darkness, listening to the music of the night air.

"My father died," Neytiri said. "In the fires of my Hometree."

"I'm sorry," said the Doctor.

"If I could have found a way to save him, I would," said Neytiri. "Even if it was dangerous. Even if it put my own life at risk."

"I had a friend," said the Doctor. "She saved her father. She nearly destroyed the world."

Neytiri held out a hand, letting the glowing woodsprites perch on her arm. "And yet you are still here," she said. "And so is the world."

"Because of Donna."

"The one you couldn't save," Neytiri remembered. She thought back to her own battle, the fight for her home world, all the Na'vi and tawtute who had died for Eywa. She thought she could see that in his eyes—a glimpse of that kind of loss. Something he was trying to hide away. "We all make sacrifices to protect those we love," said Neytiri. "Every Na'vi knows the importance of Eywa, and we are prepared to fight to the death to defend her. It's a noble sacrifice."

The Doctor gave a hollow laugh. "Of course you would," he said. "And you wouldn't even know why you're doing it. But I do." He looked over at her, and she could see such vast emptiness in his eyes, she felt as if she would drown in them. "You said you would have done anything to save your father. But he probably deserved to be saved. Me? I killed my own mother, burned her to ashes along with my home planet. You say you've made sacrifices, but you don't even understand what the word means, Neytiri. There are galaxies that no longer exist because of me. Two thirds of Earth's children were slaughtered in my name. My own granddaughter…" A strangled desperation seeped into his voice, and he stopped, trying to keep it down. "I am not a good person, Neytiri," he said. "I am not someone that deserves to be saved." A single woodsprite landed on the Doctor's forehead, but he didn't seem to pay it any heed.

"You would do anything to protect Eywa," said the Doctor. "But the reason that she needs protecting is because of me. I gave her something, Neytiri, something very important. I trusted her to protect it, and hid it beneath layers and layers of temporal dampeners—this 'unobtainium' that's introduced you to the very worst of humanity. That's my fault, Neytiri. It's all my fault."

"My mother taught me that every life is precious," said Neytiri. "Even if that life has caused the deaths of others. In the eyes of Eywa, every life is sacred, from the smallest kenten to the bad wolf."

Neytiri noticed the Doctor's hand twitch as she said this. "Is that what Eywa says?" asked the Doctor, the hint of a smile hovering around his lips.

"Yes."

The Doctor gave the ground a soft pat. "Good girl," he whispered.

As if this were all the affirmation that Eywa needed, the woodsprites leapt forward, covering the Doctor from head to foot with a sort of frenzied desperation, as if she were afraid that if she ever let him go, she would lose him forever. The Doctor gave a soft chuckle.

"I'm still not worth it," he said. "But I forgive you." He beamed. "Of course I forgive you. You're my young lady, and you're brilliant."

* * *

The leaders of the Omaticayan clan were gathered in the place they had named Fe'nantang, trying to decide what their best plan of action should be. Jakesully and Neytiri had disappeared that afternoon, and the clan had to assume that the unknown tawtute had killed them. War was on the horizon, and without Jakesully, they no longer had a leader.

And then there was a flash—a flash that looked like lightning and smelled like mountains, a flash that made the toes and ears of the Na'vi tingle, as if they were near the Tree of Souls. Several of the Na'vi began yelling, and the leaders of the Omaticayan clan could make out names. Jakesully. Neytiri.

They ran outside, and asked a young boy what had happened.

The boy pointed into the distance. "They just appeared. Out of thin air. It was them! Jakesully and Neytiri. And they had the tawtute with them."

The Omaticayan leaders gathered their army. This was clearly a hostage situation, and they wanted to be prepared for anything.

* * *

The Doctor still had a lingering woodsprite tangled in his hair, and its soft pink glow contrasted sharply with the harsh blue light coming forth from the metal tube in the Doctor's hand. Jake was beginning to get used to the Doctor's rapid mood changes, but he was still a little shaken to see the Doctor back to using that same beaming, nonchalant attitude he'd had when they'd first met, as if nothing had happened.

"Cor, that's brilliant," he said, looking up at the floating mountains. "Been brushing up on our temporal mechanics, now, have we?" He whipped out his black rimmed glasses, and perched them on his nose. "Oh, look at that multiphasic triangulation vector!" he cooed. "Now that is just… magnificent!"

"Yeah, I like that floating thing, too," Jake said. "I've never seen floating mountains before."

The Doctor arched an eyebrow. "Floating?" He seemed amused by the idea. "Is that what you see, when you look at those mountains? Just floating pieces of rock?"

Jake looked over at Neytiri for help, but she seemed just as lost as he was. "Grace said it was because of some magnetic field. It's why none of the instruments work out here."

"Oh, now the young lady's just showing off," said the Doctor. He pointed over towards the floating mountains. "It's simple, really. Nothing to do with magnetism—wouldn't be strong enough on this sort of scale. The base of those mountains exist on a tangent temporal reality to ours. The tips are multidimensional—that's why you can see them." He took the glasses off his face, and tucked them back in his pocket. "Probably looks like magnetism, though—that'll be the oscillating coefficient in the 4th dimensional variance. Sort of looks a bit like the Meisner Effect from far away. And your instruments are not malfunctioning. They're just giving you feedback from multiple temporal realities."

Jake sighed. "Yeah, I'm going to stick to the magnetism thing," he said. "It sounds less confusing."

The Doctor stared off into the distance, and gave a thoughtful look. "And it looks as if confusion is not our friend at the moment."

Jake and Neytiri turned to look in the distance, where they saw an army of approaching Na'vi warriors coming to meet them. Neytiri said something that sounded halfway between a swearword and a bad sneeze, and Jake instinctively reached for the gun he no longer had.

"They must have seen us arriving," said Neytiri.

The Doctor gave a half shrug. "Must be a bit of déjà vu for you, though, Jakey boy."

Jake stared at him. "How did you know about that?"

The Doctor grinned. "Told you. I'm very clever."

"Halt!" cried one of the elders of the clan, in fractured English. He looked over at Jake. "Tell the prisoner to put up his hands and surrender his weapons."

"No weapons," said the Doctor, holding up his hands. "Never any weapons. Completely harmless, that's me." He gave them a cheeky smile.

"He had that glowing light thing before," said a young boy. "He used it to make the lightning."

"What, this?" asked the Doctor, pulling the metal tube out from his pocket. The Omaticayan warriors brandished their weapons at him. The Doctor didn't particularly seem to mind this, but handed the tube over to Jake. "It's not a weapon. It's a screwdriver."

Jake peered at it. "It's a what?"

"Sonic screwdriver," explained the Doctor. "You remember? Used it to fix up that console back at the Tree of Souls."

The Na'vi advanced on them, their faces beginning to fill with rage. Neytiri muttered something that sounded like, "idiot," under her breath, and Jake tensed for a fight.

The Doctor examined them all carefully. "I think I might have said something wrong."

"Put down your weapons," Neytiri ordered them. She gestured at the woodsprite still clinging to his hair. "You can see he has found favor with Eywa."

The Doctor darted his eyes upwards, trying to see what she was referring to. He frowned, as if he had only just noticed the woodsprite, and then plucked it out of his hair and flung it away. "Sorry about that," he said. "Can't let you lot think I've gone domestic."

Now the warriors were drawing arrows into their bows, and Neytiri looked like she wanted to hit her head on something.

"Very clever, you said?" she whispered to the Doctor.

"Oi, I am very clever," the Doctor protested. "I'm just rubbish at the… you know… touchy feely, relationshippy bits."

"Just be quiet until we get to Fe'nantang," Neytiri said.

The Doctor visibly started when he heard this. "Until we get to what?" he asked.

"Fe'nantang," said Jake. "It's what we named our new home. It means Bad…"

"I know what it means," said the Doctor. "I've heard that phrase before."


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neytiri convinces the Omaticayans that the Doctor isn't a threat.

It took Neytiri about an hour to convince the Omaticayan leaders that the Doctor was not a threat, and was, in fact, not even a tawtute. They still didn't believe that he was the mythical Tai'Nandi, but Neytiri could hardly fault them for that. She hadn't even believed that Tai'Nandi existed until she had met him.

The Doctor was frogmarched in front of the Omaticayan leaders, presented before them as if he were a piece of meat. Jake could still remember the confusion and anxiety he had felt when he had been in the same situation—and at that time, he had still been in his avatar, which meant that he had never really been in any mortal danger. The Doctor, clearly in his own body, was certainly at risk of fatal injury (although the image of that branch falling in the schoolhouse kept replaying in Jake's mind). Yet still, the Doctor didn't look scared. Fear seemed to have no place in those dark eyes.

The most senior member of the Omaticayan council, an old man named Mahnilu, stepped forward to address the Doctor. "Neytiri says that you are Tai'Nandi."

Neytiri could see the slightest hint of pain in the Doctor's face when he heard this name, but considering the outburst earlier in the day, he seemed to hide it well. She was half expecting him to put his foot in it again, but apparently, the Doctor was on his best behavior now.

"Eywa likes to call me that," he said.

There was a murmur in the meeting hall. Mahnilu looked him over, taking careful note of his short hair. Neytiri hadn't quite understood how it was that the Doctor managed to commune with Eywa so freely, and thus, she had explained it badly to the council.

"What do you know of Eywa?" asked Mahnilu.

The Doctor took a moment to scan the room. "Eywa is perhaps the most important being in the universe," he said, carefully. "I have known her since she was very small, and she has never failed me. I trust her with my life, and the lives of every other sentient life form in existence. She has saved me from certain death, and I sacrificed nearly everything I had to defend her. I am in her debt."

The warrior who had confronted the Doctor earlier—Fir'yatton—stepped forward now. "I saw him earlier," said Fir'yatton. "He threw the atrokirina away as if it were not fit to be in his presence. He has no real respect for Eywa."

"I don't worship her," said the Doctor. "But I respect her, and I expect her to take her duty seriously." And Neytiri could see in his eyes what he left unsaid, that he felt it was he who was unworthy of her respect and adoration, not the other way around.

"He says he can help us," said Jake. "I told him about the humans who are coming, and he wants to defend Eywa."

There were loud protests made about this, and Jake tried to quiet them down. "I trust him," said Jake.

"How can we trust someone who purposely sets out to defile the Tree of Souls?" Mahnilu asked him. "You, perhaps, could be excused because of ignorance. But you can tell by speaking to him that he knows Eywa. He has communed with her. And still he used that… thing to harm the sacred tree!"

"He didn't harm the tree," insisted Neytiri. "He fixed it."

"And how can he fix something that isn't broken?" Fir'yatton demanded. "The tawtute came here insisting that they could fix us, too. And look at what they did! What if he wants to do the same?"

"Isn't it broken, though?" asked the Doctor. He looked straight into Fir'yatton's eyes, and even though the Doctor was by far the shortest man in the room, everyone seemed to shrink beneath his gaze. "You have a neural link to this planet. I know you can feel it. Tell me, honestly, is everything all right? Do you really want me to walk away?"

Fir'yatton faltered, momentarily struck dumb by this diagnosis. The Doctor looked at the others present in the room.

"You all know there's something very wrong with Eywa," said the Doctor. "For a half a million years, she has been weak. Unable to defend herself, drained to the point of exhaustion. Things have begun to decay, laws and rules have been broken, slaughter has broken out. Do you really think that things are supposed to happen this way?"

"The first tawtute explorers were kind to us," said Mahnilu. "They made the same promises that you do now, but then they went home and told others, those who came and did not care about Eywa or the preservation of life. Will not this stranger return to his home world and spread stories of his adventures? Will he not encourage others of his kind to overrun us?"

Neytiri saw something change in the way the Doctor was standing—something so small and slight that the others probably did not notice. It was the way that his eyes seemed to sink into darkness, the way his jaw clenched, ever so slightly, when they mentioned his home world. She remembered his words, when they were in the forest. How his home world had burned, and he would have burned—he wanted to burn, to die with the others. But Eywa had saved him.

"I have never betrayed her," said the Doctor. "And I never will."

And somehow, when he said it, everyone believed him.

"He is not a warrior," Fir'yatton said to Jake, a little half-heartedly. "I don't see what he can possibly do to help."

The Doctor looked over at Jake and Neytiri, as if asking permission to speak. It was another mask, Neytiri realized. Another role the Doctor played. He could play each part as if it were his own, and shed it when it no longer suited him. Before, when he had first met Neytiri and Jake, he had played the fool. He had been lighthearted, carefree, casual, with only the occasional blank mask to hide the darker aspects of his personality. When he had talked to her at the Tree of Souls, he had become the teacher. And now, he was playing the role of the obedient public servant, willing to help out in any way that he could.

She wondered what would happen if he were to drop all the masks.

Neytiri stepped in before Jake could say something stupid. "He has knowledge of Eywa that surpasses all we have seen and heard," said Neytiri. "He speaks to her like a father and mentor, and she comes alive at his touch. He cares deeply for both tawtute and Na'vi, and has risked his life for both. If anyone can end this conflict peacefully, he can."

Jake looked over at him. "Anything to add to that, Doctor?"

The Doctor blew a breath out of his cheeks and scratched the back of his head. "Actually, that pretty much covers it." He gave Jake a bright smile. "So? Allons-y!"


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor tells Eywa not to sleep with Captain Jack. Then tells Jake his fears about who's actually trying to dig up Eywa, and what they're really after.

The Doctor didn't sleep that night. Jake and Neytiri offered him a leaf to sleep on, but he had declined it. Neytiri had watched him, lying in the grass, staring up at the sky and talking. Just talking. About anything. Once, when she had gone out to see if he was tired, she overheard him having the most bizarre conversation she could imagine.

"And that's another thing," the Doctor said to Eywa. "Don't you dare sleep with Jack Harkness. He'll charm the pants right off of you, that one. Human. Well, I say human. Fifty first century. Immortal, so you'll probably run into him sooner or later. Fancies me a bit—well, can't blame him for that, can we? But I absolutely forbid you to have sex with Jack Harkness. Do you understand me, young lady?"

The Doctor paused, then scoffed. "If you think a little thing like physical compatibility is going to stop him, you clearly don't know Jack Harkness."

Neytiri decided it was time to leave before she heard any more of that conversation.

Perhaps it was Eywa who had known it, or perhaps the Doctor had some magic himself, but somehow, the Doctor was the first person to know that the ship had landed. First thing in the morning, Jake discovered the Doctor fiddling with the radio.

He snatched the radio out of the Doctor's hands. "What are you doing?" he asked. "I'm expecting a message on that."

The Doctor pulled a hand through his hair. "Bit late for that, I think."

Jake was, for a moment, completely confused. And then he worked it out. "They've landed already."

"Yes," said the Doctor, with a sigh.

"And we haven't gotten any message because they've already taken the base and disabled their communications," Jake realized. He handed back the radio, and started digging through his belongings, trying to gather weapons. "We have to go and rescue them."

"They're fine," said the Doctor. "I've already spoken to them."

Jake paused. "But you just said…"

The Doctor raised the sonic screwdriver. "Told you, I'm clever. We're currently at a very nicely engineered temporal nexus point, which let me reroute the communications array through an alternative causal matrix."

"So you just waved that buzzy screwdriver around and made the radio work?" Jake asked.

The Doctor gave him a look he was used to getting from Neytiri, the look that told him just what an idiot he was. "Essentially, yes," said the Doctor.

"Okay, then so far we're all good," said Jake. He noticed the Doctor still fiddling with the radio, and the concerned expression on his face. "We're not all good, are we?"

The Doctor dragged a hand down over his face. "I've been thinking," he said to Jake. "And I started thinking about some of those names you've been dropping. Not the Na'vi names—I've worked those out for myself, thank you. But those human names, they bother me. Pandora. Unobtainium. Hell's Gate. They're all too exact, too precise." He looked up at Jake. "It's like someone already knows. Someone has already worked it out. Perhaps I've gotten here too late and something else has fallen through the cracks."

"Worked what out?" Jake asked.

The Doctor didn't say anything.

Jake sat down at the table opposite him. "Doctor, you told me that the unobtanium here is only useful because it's drawing power from something hidden inside this planet. Something you hid, apparently, that makes Eywa the most important being in the universe. What is she hiding, Doctor? What are we defending?"

The Doctor didn't say a word.

"We're on your side, Doctor," Jake pleaded. "You can trust us."

"They said that, too," said the Doctor. "Right before they killed my granddaughter."

Jake felt his heart skip a beat. "Who?"

"Doesn't matter," the Doctor said. "What does matter is trying to figure out who exactly is in charge of this mining operation and how much they know. Could be curious humans bumbling about with things they don't understand. Or was there enough time for an emergency temporal shift before Donna saved the universe? Maybe Davros survived somehow." He leaned back in his chair. "Or maybe I'm overreacting. The names could just be a bit of temporal debris floating around. Some message from an alternate timeline that never achieved fruition."

"Wait, what?" asked Jake. "Is that even possible?"

"I've been hearing one of those since I got here," said the Doctor. "A message to someone who can't possibly receive it. Makes my hearts skip a beat every time." He gave Jake a wry smile. "At any rate, I told Norm to make sure all the humans at the base surrender immediately and not put up a fight, so I'm hoping we'll have the advantage of foreknowledge. That way, I can just waltz in and cause enough trouble to get myself arrested."

"Wait, wait, wait," said Jake. "You're going to what?"

"Get myself arrested," said the Doctor. He gave Jake a pointed look. "Try to keep up, Jakey boy, it's really not that hard. I get arrested, I see the head honcho, work out what he knows, foil his plans, escape, and hey presto. Back in time for tea."

Jake wasn't really sure why the Doctor was looking at _him_ as if _he_ was the idiot. That clearly had to be the stupidest plan he'd ever heard. "And what's to stop them from just taking off with you on board?" asked Jake. "What if they decide that Pandora's a lost cause, but time travel is the next best investment, and you would more than make up for their losses? Or, worse yet, what about when they work out that you've messed up their plans? They know the Tree of Souls is important. They've tried to destroy it before."

"Told you," said the Doctor. "I fixed that. And they certainly won't let me leave the planet. After all, I'm the only one who knows where this thing's hidden."

"And the only one who knows what it is, or what's at risk if it's found."

"I've already told you what's at risk," said the Doctor. "Everything."

"Yeah, but do you mean everything on this world? Everything on Earth? Everything in the galaxy?" He was looking at the expression on the Doctor's face, and it was not inspiring confidence. "Everything in the universe?" he guessed.

"Keep going," said the Doctor, as he got up and strode out of the room. "You'll get there eventually."


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor sets out to get captured by the invading humans.

"This is the stupidest idea ever," Neytiri hissed to Jake as they followed the Doctor to the teleportation plant outside Fe'nantang. "He's going to get himself killed, and leave us stuck back where we started. Why don't we just attack them like we did before?"

They were sneaking around, trying to make it so that the Doctor didn't know they were following him. Neytiri was certain she could have succeeded if she'd gone alone, but Jake, while being both brave and heroic, was certainly not subtle. With the amount of noise they were making, she was surprised the Doctor didn't already know they were there.

"He said we should get as much knowledge as we can before we attack. He did something back at the Tree of Souls—something to do with Grace, I think—and he said that because of that we'd only get one good strike at this new group of soldiers and we need to make it count."

"That makes no sense," said Neytiri.

"Actually, it does," said the Doctor, loudly, from several feet in front of them. "He's just not doing a very good job of explaining it." He turned around, and gestured towards them. "Well, are you two just going to stand there all day, or are you going to do this properly and follow me?"

Neytiri scowled. "I knew you wouldn't be any good at sneaking up," she said to Jake.

"Not his fault," said the Doctor, digging out his sonic screwdriver. "I blame his inferior biology. Not used to dense atmospheric pressures."

He buzzed the sonic screwdriver, and in a flash of light, they were somewhere else. Jake had expected them to appear at Hell's Gate or maybe even inside the compound, but instead, they seemed to be in the middle of a completely unfamiliar piece of forest. He looked around. "Where are we?"

"Other side of the planet," said the Doctor. "Sorry. Had to make a stopover first."

He darted over to something that was clustered by a large tree. It was covered with vines and woodsprites, and the various different bits of fauna surrounding it all seemed to lean in, as if wanting to touch it themselves. But underneath all that was something that Jake confessed he hadn't expected to see in the middle of the Pandoran wilderness.

"It's… one of those things," he sputtered. "That they used in England two hundred years ago or something. With the phones." He blinked. "It's got English writing on it!"

The Doctor seemed to take no notice, instead focusing all his attention on the blue box. He gave it an affectionate pat. "How are you doing, old girl?" he asked. "Had a nice chat with our young lady while I've been gone?" He fished a small, metal key out of his pocket, stuck it in the lock, and opened the door.

Jake was still sputtering, but Neytiri was trying to work things out. She crept towards it. It was blue—the same blue color as her skin, and was about the same height as she was. She touched the outside, and felt something warm tingle around the tips of her fingers—like the Tree of Souls. She wondered if this blue box was just like the tree—not really made of wood at all, and bigger on the inside.

Was this the legendary Tardis from the Songs of Never?

The Doctor darted out again, carrying the device that humans wore across their face when they were walking along the surface of the planet. He waved it over at Jake. "Look familiar?"

"That's an exopack!" said Jake, who hadn't yet lost his completely baffled sputtering tone of voice. "But it's purple!"

"Good," said the Doctor. "Right century, then. Well, I say right century. Actually picked this up in the 34th century at a museum gift shop. But they said it was a perfect replica."

"You haven't had any trouble breathing so far," Neytiri pointed out.

"Yeah," said the Doctor, locking the door to his blue box. "But they don't need to know that. Best to let them think I'm human until I work out what's really going on." He strapped the exopack on, and did up the breathing mask. "Ugh!" he said. "Smells like Uligen Minor. I hate Uligen Minor."

He turned to Neytiri. "Right, end of the line for you two. Want to make sure they don't know I have backup on the way. Here." He handed Neytiri the remains of the radio he'd been fiddling with earlier that morning. "When that beeps, call in the cavalry. The teleports won't work without me, so you'll have to fly in. Just remember: the state of grace circuits are now active, so any weaponry more sophisticated than bows and arrows won't work."

"That doesn't make any sense," said Jake. "And I still don't get what Grace has to do with anything."

The Doctor gave him that familiar look. "You wouldn't, by any chance, happen to be related to a Ricky Smith?"

Jake stared blankly at him. The Doctor sighed. "Never mind. Just… don't do anything without clearing it with her first," he said, pointing at Neytiri.

"But…" said Jake, and then the world went white, and they were back outside of Fe'nantang, and the Doctor was gone.

* * *

It wasn't actually that hard to get arrested. The Doctor was really very good at causing a nuisance. Of course, since the entire rest of the base was under lockdown, they didn't even bother to lock him up in a real prison cell. Instead, they just shut him up in what looked like it had once been some sort of scientific laboratory.

There, he discovered a small group of humans who were talking quietly amongst themselves. One of them had a voice he recognized.

"You must be Norm," said the Doctor, bounding over to him. He offered his hand forward, grinning happily. "I'm the Doctor. Lovely to finally meet you in person."

Norm seemed a little freaked out by this. He looked the Doctor over a few times. "But you're… I mean, you look…"

"Perfectly human and certainly not here to cause trouble," said the Doctor, giving him a little wink. Then he dove forward and swept him into a seemingly impulsive embrace, which Norm was feeling completely uncomfortable with until he heard the Doctor whispering in his ear, "Have they noticed that the guns don't work, yet?"

"No," said Norm, suddenly understanding the man's bizarre and inexplicable behavior.

The Doctor pulled out of the embrace. "Good man," he said. Then he bound over to the abandoned work station. "Right," he said, loud enough to make sure that all the armed guards around could hear him. "Now, far as I can work out, this whole mess is over the mining rights to something called unobtainium. But that's just your basic run-of-the-mill quazi-crystalline structure containing a fivefold molecular symmetry with built in magnetic voids. So, as they say, why mine the gold when you've got an alchemist."

He looked over at the armed guards, who were trying to look disinterested. "Blimey, talk about the military mind." He bounded over, and then started mixing things together, hooking up bits and bobs to build the machinery that would produce this useless material that had the humans so fascinated. Of course, if he understood the structure of Earth-based corporations, the people making the decisions probably wouldn't be able to tell that his 'unobtainium' was completely worthless, but that would just play right into his hands, then, wouldn't it?

Norm was gawping at him. "You mean while the RDA has been raising a small army to mine this stuff, we could have just stayed at home and mass produced it in a lab?"

"Oh, yeah," lied the Doctor. "Course, you need a genius like me to do it, but once you work it out, easy as pie. Good thing, pie. Apple pie, especially. I like apples. Particularly the ones you get in the fall just as the leaves are turning all those different colors." The Doctor kept up the ramble, but he was no longer paying attention to the words that were coming out of his mouth. He was mainly hoping to distract the guards from the fact that he was cobbling together a piece of technology that was several centuries before its time.

And then, ta da! There it was. One piece of totally worthless (and completely obtainable) unobtainium. Stripped of everything that could actually be remotely useful without time travel technology, but still resembling that shiny metallic rock he'd used to hide Eywa away during the war. By now the guards had dropped all pretence of ignoring him and were openly gawping. He tossed the rock to one of the guards. "There you go, big guy. Pay your way home."

And sure enough, after that, it was only a matter of time before he got to see the big cheese—a Mr. Clarence, not that the name meant anything to him. So far the entire plan seemed to be going swimmingly. Now he just had to play dumb and let the villain talk so that he could work out how much they actually knew.

He knew the big cheese was human the moment he walked through the door. He'd always been quite good at identifying species, even without waving the sonic screwdriver around. Which meant this lot had to be the bumbling humans variety. Good. All he had to do now was to convince them that they were messing with things they didn't understand, then let them all pack up and go home. Or maybe, with his demonstration in the lab, they'd think they had the formula for financial success in their pockets, and they'd go home anyways.

"Uligen Minor," said Clarence.

The Doctor froze. "Beg pardon?" he said, in what he hoped was a clueless voice.

"On your exopack," said Clarence. "It looks like a normal pack, but if you look carefully at the bottom, it says, 'made in Uligen Minor'."

"Ah," said the Doctor.

"And there is no Uligen Minor," said Clarence. "I've checked."

"Um," said the Doctor, scratching the back of his head. "It's new?"

"Or maybe," Clarence continued, "the reason I haven't heard of Uligen Minor is because it hasn't been discovered yet. Because it's from the future." He looked up at the Doctor, and smiled. "And that would make you the Doctor."

"Ah," said the Doctor. He thrust his hands into his pockets, thumbing the settings on his sonic screwdriver that would send the signal to Jake and Neytiri. "There are many things about this that are not good."

"My boss told me about you, Doctor," said Clarence. "Some kind of time and space traveler. Defender of the innocent. A genius in his own right. But if you really are the Doctor, then you know what this thing is that we're looking for. You can tell us where it's buried, and you can show us how to use it."

The armed guards came over and pointed their weapons at the Doctor's head. The Doctor's mind was racing, trying to work everything out, trying to determine how best to play the situation to get the information he needed.

"Bit heavy handed for a treasure hunt," said the Doctor, taking his hands out of his pockets, and putting them up in the traditional sign of surrender. "Ship full of soldiers. Not your conventional mining group, is it?"

"Up until a year ago, this venture was just about the unobtainium," Clarence said. "But then we got this report from Jake Sully, about the Songs of Never that are sung on this world. And it took us a while, but with some help from Torchwood, we worked out what these Songs of Never were really about. A Time Walker who buried a secret treasure beneath the surface of Pandora. Something powerful, something he wanted to keep out of a 'war that never happened'. Something that could give its wielder ultimate power over creation."

"Something you really, really don't want to touch," said the Doctor. "You called this planet Pandora, so take your own advice. Once you open this box, you're never going to be able to close it again. Go away now, and be grateful you've escaped with your lives."

"We know it's dangerous," said Clarence. "My boss may be many things, but he is certainly not an idiot. The RDA trusts its scientists with a lot, but with something like this? Hardly prudent. We were just here to take pot shots at the Na'vi, but now that you've shown up, we can finally get what we really want."

"I'm not going to help you," said the Doctor. "Worse beings than you have tried to make me."

"Thing is, you don't really have any choice in the matter," said Clarence. He nodded at the two guards, who advanced on the Doctor. The Doctor was about to run for it, when something slammed into the back of his head.

"I think it's time you met my boss, Doctor," said Clarence, as the world around him went dark.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jake and Neytiri discover what happened to the Doctor.

The battle, insomuch as it could be called a battle, went quickly. With none of the human weapons functioning, and the Na'vi warriors careful not to kill, there were minimal casualties and the skirmish was over quickly. Soldiers were packed up and sent home, most of them grumbling, although one of them seemed particularly excited about something.

"Honest! He just started scurrying around and then, pop! Unobtainium! Out of thin air! I'm going to be rich when I work out how he did it."

Jake accosted the soldier. "The guy who made the unobtainium," he said. "Where is he?"

The soldier looked a little bit nervous. "I… I don't know," he stammered. "I took him to see Mr. Clarence, and then you guys showed up. He's probably still in there."

But of course, he wasn't.

In the end, it was Neytiri who found him. She grabbed Jake, and nearly dragged him through the complex. "He's in the cells," she said. "Come on."

When they found him, he was lounging around with his hands in his pockets, staring at the white walls. As soon as Jake and Neytiri were in eyesight, he crossed his arms and said (in English), "About time you two showed up."

Jake figured the rudeness was for his benefit. "Why didn't you just use your screwdriver thing?" he asked.

The Doctor shrugged, but didn't answer.

Jake punched in the code and opened the door from the outside. "Did you work anything out? How much do they know?"

The Doctor gave a sideways smile. "Nothing. This was just a last ditch effort. Pandora's finished now, anyways, and everyone knows it."

Neytiri was the first one to react. Her grasp of English wasn't perfect, but she'd picked up on the name just the same way that Jake had. She drew an arrow and threaded it into her bow with lightning fast speed. Jake, who couldn't use a bow and arrow to save his life, tried to look as menacing as he could with a knife.

The man in the pinstripe suit sighed, and put up his hands. "It was the Pandora thing that gave it away, wasn't it?" said the guy. "I knew he didn't call it Pandora. Must call it that stupid other spiritual name. Ee-ya or something."

"Who are you?" Jake demanded. "And where's the Doctor?"

The man-who-wasn't-the-Doctor gave a small shrug. "Name's Mitt Humphling. Head of the RDA. And you can forget about the Doctor. He's dead now. Gone. Kaput. Drained his brain, poor guy. No real use for it, after all. But, well, after all that money we poured into the avatar program, you didn't think we wouldn't want to take it to the next level, now, did you? I mean, controlling mindless clones is one thing, but controlling living, breathing people—now that's useful. And controlling this guy? Do you have any idea what kind of power this guy holds? There's a clause in the central Earth government's handbook that whenever the Doctor shows up, full military access privileges are to be given to him immediately. Do you have any idea what I could do with something like that?"

"You killed him?" Jake said.

"Oh, yeah," said Humphling. "Course I did. I mean, it was the only way to shut him up. The way he went on at me, you'd think that I was the big bad wolf."

Jake leapt forward, ready to strike the man down, but Neytiri stopped him. She had noticed the way the Doctor's hand had twitched when Humphling had said the words "bad wolf".

"He's still in there," said Neytiri. "The Doctor's still alive."

Humphling gave a slow clap. "Oh, well done Doctor. They worked it out." He gave them an evil grin—the kind of grin that looked so wrong on the Doctor's face. "I was sure I could make you guys kill him in a blind fit of rage. That would be fitting, wouldn't it? Done in by his own companions. Serve him right."

"But… you said you wanted him to control the Earth military or something," said Jake.

"Earth military is nothing compared to SecOps," said Humphling. "And really, all I needed him for was to work out what it was we were looking for and where it's buried. But it turns out he doesn't even know where the damn key's buried anyways."

"What key?" asked Jake.

"And that bit of information," said Humphling, "is locked away in a very, very dark part of his mind. You should see it. I mean, ouch, that's dark. He must really have some demons locked up in there. The walls he's piled around this thing—well, needless to say I'll never be able to break them."

Jake turned to Neytiri. "The real Humphling must be in one of these avatar control pods. Find the one that's in use and hit the red button."

"Think you can just eject me from his mind, huh?" said Humphling. "Won't work. See, I'm not on Pandora at the moment. I'm back on Earth."

Jake just stared at him. "What?"

"That's pretty much what the Doctor said when I told him," said Humphling. "But, well, he should have worked it out sooner. After all, there's only one method of communication that can randomly transcend space and time like that—a cell phone from the 21st century, one once used by a Miss Donna Noble from Chiswick."

"The one he couldn't save," Neytiri remembered.

"Is that what happened to her?" asked Humphling in a mock sad tone. "Aw, what a shame. Well, actually, I'm not sure I really care."

Jake looked at Neytiri. Neytiri was the one who took charge. "We'll take him to Eywa," said Neytiri. "She'll bring the Doctor back."

"Sorry to rain on your parade, but I'm a little upset at the Doctor right now," said Humphling. "I'm not sure I want to give him back. I mean, if he ever does get control of this body again, the first thing he's gonna do is destroy the RDA and bury me in so much debt, I'll never be able to live comfortably again. So I'm going to protect my investment, and get rid of him for good."

Humphling's malicious smile grew. "Oh, he's scared now. I didn't even know that was possible. I didn't think anything could scare the Doctor."

"What are you doing?" Jake demanded.

"Remember that dark bit of his brain I told you about?" said Humphling. "Well, all I have to do to get rid of the Doctor is…" His eyes rolled up in his head, and suddenly, the not-Doctor crashed to the floor.

Just behind him stood Norm, with something big and metallic in his hand. A chip-extractor.

"I saw they put some kind of chip in his head," said Norm. "I thought maybe this would help." He looked down at the Doctor. "Did I get him in time?"

There was a loud bang, as they heard something crash into the wall of the compound. Neytiri looked over at Jake, and there was a look akin to terror in her eyes.

"No," she said. "I think we're too late. And I think that Eywa knows it."


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jake and Neytiri try to save the Doctor.

Outside, the sky was gray, and the wind was screaming through the trees. As Jake moved through the forest, woodsprites kept landing on the Doctor's body, while tree branches seemed to reach out for him. The forest came alive around them, reaching out, trying to touch him, to hold him, making the journey far more exhausting than it should have been. When Jake put the Doctor down for a quick breather, the fauna seemed to come alive, tangling itself around the Doctor's arms, legs, head, curving around his temples, as if searching, vainly, for something it couldn't find.

"It's Eywa, isn't it?" said Jake. "She's upset."

"I heard her when we were at the Tree of Souls," said Neytiri. "She is so frightened of losing him. She was alone at the dawn of the Days of Necholod. The Doctor found her, and cared for her when she had no one. When he dies, she'll be all alone again. Do you realize how terrifying that is?"

"She has the Na'vi," said Jake. "And all the other animals and plants on her surface."

"It's not the same," said Neytiri. "You hear how she and the Doctor talk. It is not the same way we speak to Eywa. The Doctor and Eywa—they are something beautiful, something incomprehensible. We are so very small compared to them."

Jake looked at the Doctor, at his vacant, empty eyes and his rising and falling chest. "Do you think there's any way to get him back?"

Neytiri examined him carefully. "No," she said. "I don't think so. I think he's gone. They broke him apart and dissected his soul. There's nothing left for Eywa but an empty body."

There was a sudden crackle, and the radio sprang to life. Jake raised it up to hear it over the roar of the wind. "Norm, is that you? Did you find anything?"

"Yeah," said Norm. "Yeah, I'm here. I've got that bleepy blue pen thing you gave me. I don't know who this Doctor guy you picked up really is, but he's a total genius. I didn't think it was possible to hack into half these files. And did you know he can actually make unobtainium?"

"Yeah, that's great, Norm," said Jake. "What did you find out about that implant?"

"Oh, that," said Norm. "Well, it's sort of an imbedded subproject beneath the avatar project. They call it Project Bad Wolf."

Neytiri's eyes widened. She caught Jake's arm, and pointed at the Doctor. But by the time that Jake looked over, the Doctor was just the way he'd been before. Jake held the radio up to his mouth. "Sorry, Norm. Did you say, 'Bad Wolf'?"

And there it was. That same twitch in the Doctor's arm whenever he heard that phrase. Not as pronounced, as if it were somehow being suppressed or dampened in some way—but something, some part of him, was getting through!

"That's right," said Norm. "It, um, doesn't actually have anything to do with wolves, though, bad or otherwise. It's sort of like the avatar program, but it uses a chip to suppress the natural brainwave patterns of the host body, so that someone else can take it over. The host personality eventually gets tucked away into a mental pocket—which usually means the host personality can take over again when you're done playing avatar. But it looks like it doesn't work very well with soldiers. Like, their brains sort of build up mental shields that are too high, and you can't get the original persona back out again."

Neytiri's grasp of English was quite good, but this was beyond her. Jake translated as best he could.

"Then Eywa will knock down the walls," said Neytiri. "We will save him."

Jake had been to war before. He knew what that sort of thing meant. "If we break down his mental shields, we might destroy him anyways," Jake said. "You said it yourself. We're tiny compared to him. I watched Hometree burn, and I still have nightmares. Imagine watching planets burn. Imagine galaxies collapsing before your eyes."

Neytiri gazed at the empty body lying on the ground, listened to the wail of the wind in her ears, felt the icy chill of sorrow run across her spine. "It's not up to us," she said. "It's Eywa's choice."

By the time they reached the Tree of Souls, others had already begun to gather—not just the Na'vi from the Omaticayan clan, but Na'vi from other clans as well. Everyone could feel the change in Eywa. Everyone knew that something was very wrong.

They were, perhaps, not expecting this slender humanoid to be the source of Eywa's distress.

The Na'vi began protesting, shouting that the Omaticayan clan was causing these troubles by constantly bringing tawtute to the sacred tree.

"The tawtute tear at the land until there is nothing left," they shouted. "They tried to wipe us out before. And ever since their souls have joined Eywa, she has changed. They are destroying Eywa from the inside out!"

They swarmed around Jake and Neytiri, grabbing for the limp body in their hands, shouting and swearing they'd tear the unconscious man to pieces. Jake tried to get the Doctor to the tree, but soon the mob had overtaken him, and he felt the body wrenched from his hands. He cried out, but he couldn't see through the sea of chaos and rage.

There was a sudden crack, and a flash, as a bolt of lightning struck the Tree of Souls. The mob stopped, suddenly shocked into silence, and some of them began to scream. Jake prepared himself for the angry fire that would consume the tree—but it never came.

The tree glowed a bright orange, like the embers of a fire, and then melted back into its usual hue. It wasn't even scorched. Jake made a mental note to thank the Doctor for the indestructible-tree upgrade when they got back to Fe'nantang. But then he remembered what had happened to the Doctor, and he felt his blood run cold.

"It's a sign from Eywa," shouted someone.

"She rejects the tawtute from her presence!" shouted another.

And the mob began to reform, edging back towards the prone Doctor, their rage and confusion fueling their blind loathing. Neytiri and Jake tried to push through the crowd to reach the Doctor first, but the crowd was too dense. They could only stand and watch as the Doctor's body was hoisted up, as if they were preparing it for some barbaric sacrifice.

Their cries were cut short by the howl of the viperwolves.

It was a howl that seemed to surround the Na'vi gathered by the sacred tree. It seemed to come from every direction at once, and as Neytiri and Jake looked about, they discovered that this was, indeed, the case. They had never seen so many viperwolves gathered together at one time before. The Na'vi began to ready their weapons, losing interest in the Doctor all together, only desiring to protect their families. Mothers hugged their children, and a few started crying as the beasts stalked towards them.

In one swift bound, the beasts lunged forwards—over the heads of the gathered Na'vi, and towards the Doctor. The Na'vi who had been baying for his blood now stepped back, hoping the wolves would finish him off. But they didn't. The viperwolves circled the Doctor, snapping at any Na'vi who got too close.

"The Bad Wolf," Neytiri said to Jake. "It's a message from Eywa, Jake. A message to us about him."

Jake shook his head. "No, he mentioned something about it earlier. He said it was a message for someone who couldn't possibly receive it."

The crowd parted in front of them, and Jake and Neytiri found themselves face to face with a pack of viperwolves. But they weren't as frightening as they had been when Jake last met them—that night in the forest, when Neytiri had saved him from the Pandoran wilderness and introduced him to the Na'vi. When he looked into their eyes, he saw no mindless savagery there. He saw only the smooth gold of their corneas, burning brightly in the night with something like desperation. Jake and Neytiri stepped forward, following their escorts to the Doctor, who lay on the ground like a broken doll, eyes still staring into nothing, arms and legs still limp. They could see a thin trickle of blood dripping down from his nose and a long gash along his forehead—as if he had been grazed by a knife. His trench coat had been flung away, and his suit jacket was cut and torn in various places, his tie split down the middle. Jake picked him up, and the three of them made their way to the Tree of Souls.

"You call this man a tawtute," said Neytiri, as Jake set the Doctor down at the tree's base. "You say he is like the rest, but you can see how Eywa favors him. You have seen her mourn when he is hurt, you have seen her summon others to defend him. He is not a tawtute. We speak of his kind in the Songs of Never, of the krrtiranyu—the Time Walker—whom Eywa rescued from the fires of Hell. He is Tai'Nandi, the Lonely God, the father of Eywa."

There was a smattering of protest, but Neytiri pushed on with fierce determination.

"Don't deny what you have seen with your own eyes," insisted Neytiri. She watched as the foliage beneath the tree curved around the Doctor's arms and legs, encircling the crown of his head and sprouting small, delicate flowers along his temples. A swarm of woodsprites landed upon him, until he was nearly invisible at the base of the tree. "The Tree of Souls cannot be destroyed when he is near. The animals who seek to harm us do not attack him. The forest comes alive at his touch, and when he speaks, Eywa listens. We sing songs of the tawvrretp—the sky demons, whose evil magic made our bodies glow but did not destroy us. Of a distant war that never truly happened, of skies that change and stars that move, of birth and death and sacrifice. He sings these same songs. Can you deny Eywa the chance to free him from his torment?"

The assembled crowd looked a little sheepish. One of them protested that Tai'Nandi was a Na'vi, like themselves, and that this man was far too small and insignificant to be the father of Eywa, but most of the others seemed to accept Neytiri's words, and assembled to chant to the Tree of Souls. Jake watched the ceremony he had seen a year before, when they had tried to save Grace. They hadn't managed to save her. Would they save this Doctor, the man Neytiri claimed could walk through time?

The chanting began, the Na'vi words sliding one into the next as they bowed their heads, the sound growing in a crescendo until they reverberated off the canyon walls. Neytiri connected her braid to the sacred tree, allowing her mind to access the soul of Eywa. She closed her eyes, concentrating on the task at hand. She tried, harder and harder, her exertion showing on her face as the chanting continued. "I can't find him," she said through gritted teeth. "It's too dark."

And then the Doctor's body seemed to spasm, and a gold mist began to swirl out from his skin. Neytiri's eyes snapped open, and Jake could see the panic in their depths. "He's dying," she said. "I can't do it."

The golden cloud grew thicker and thicker above his skin, the vegetation and woodsprites flying away from him with rapid alarm, the Na'vi chant still continuing, louder and louder. And just as it appeared that the Doctor would be completely consumed by the golden mist, Jake felt something change.

It wasn't a smell or sight or taste or sound. It wasn't something flashy like a bolt of lightning, or something dramatic like the forest floor illuminating beneath their feet. But deep beneath the surface of the planet, just at the edges of every sensory perception he had, Jake could feel something shift.

It was something so powerful, something so completely beyond anything that Jake could ever imagine, that Jake felt his knees go rubber. It seemed to make reality bend and wobble around them, and there was a reverberation in his eardrums, like a sound that was too overwhelming to hear. The chanting paused, as if every Na'vi had taken a single breath in unison, but when Jake looked at them, he could see their mouths were still moving, and they were still swaying together. Their eyes were open now, darting back and forth as if trying to make sense of what was happening. For a moment, Neytiri seemed to flicker like a flame, bending in and out of reality. Then she stabilized, shining with something that tingled the back of Jake's mind and touched his heart.

The Doctor's body buckled, and he let out an inhuman scream.

His arms and legs shook, the golden mist still gliding across his skin, and he seemed to reach out, calling for something—no, someone—in a language Jake couldn't understand. His voice rose and rose in pitch and volume, until it, too, was lost in the deafening silence. And it was only at this point that Jake realized he could now make out what the Doctor was saying.

It was a word.

"Rose."


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inside the Doctor's mind. What is really buried at the heart of Eywa?

It was dark. So dark. He tried and tried but he could not chase away the darkness. He tried to back away but the memories kept coming, they kept bashing against him, wearing him down until he was nothing. And he was sorry, he was so sorry, it was all his fault and he couldn't forgive himself for being selfish and wanting to live, when he should have died in the fires of his home world.

_—I know you know where it is, Doctor, says Rassilon. The Key has disappeared, along with a certain sentient planet you seem to have taken a particular shine to. Where are they, Doctor? Where did you hide them?_

_—The Key is gone, says the Doctor. Romana can tell you that just as well as I can. We tried to assemble it without the final segment. The pieces became faulty. Time itself was collapsing. I had to destroy the Key to preserve the universe. The Matrix databanks…_

_—Are false, Doctor, says Rassilon. Your recent return from the planet Chaos coincided with the removal of Eywa from the Necholod Star System. You moved her somewhere else, Doctor, and you've given her the Key. I am the Lord Rassilon, Weaver of the Web of Time, Creator of Gallifrey, Savior of the Time Lords. Do you really think you can hide this from me?_

He could smell the ash in his hair, could hear the energy weapons firing in the distance. The screams, the never ending screams…

_There is Susan, right in front of him, just the way she was when he left her to rebuild the Earth. He is watching her, a staser in his hands, and he can hear that voice in his ear again, the voice that slithers through the halls of the Citadel and infects all it touches._

_—You know what I want, Doctor._

_—Yes, the Doctor says. You want me to kill my own granddaughter. You want me to murder her in cold blood._

_—Now, now, Doctor, says Lord Rassilon. You know that isn't really what I want. I want to know where you hid the Key. Susan has thirteen regenerations. You can save her life if you tell me before she runs through them all. Or you can end her suffering yourself._

_—The Key is safe, says the Doctor._

_—You can trust me, Doctor. I'm on your side. With the Key to Time, I can destroy the Daleks permanently. I can end this war with just a thought. Don't you want that, Doctor? Don't you want this war to end?_

_They have already started. Susan is changing in front of his eyes, she is screaming, sparking with vortex energy, and the Doctor can feel his hands shaking._

_—I know why you really want the Key, Rassilon, says the Doctor. I was there when you created Zagreus. I've seen the way you've manipulated those around you. I can't let you have that kind of power._

_—You refuse to let the Key fall into the hands of a being who is nothing short of a god, says Rassilon, but you entrust it to some primitive, semi-evolved life form like Eywa?_

_—I entrust it to no one, says the Doctor. Not even myself. That sort of power should never be used. I've given it to someone I trust will never use it._

_Susan keeps screaming. Her voice is tearing at his mind and ripping through his hearts._

_—You can save Susan, Doctor, says Rassilon. Just tell me where you've hidden Eywa._

_—No._

_—Tell me, Doctor!_

_—I said no! says the Doctor. This isn't about the War, Rassilon, it's about the universe. Can't you understand that? I can't let anyone find the Key. It's too important._

_—Not even to save your grandchild?_

_—Not even to save every grandchild on Gallifrey._

_A pause._

_—I have lost my patience with you, Doctor. Enjoy the last few moments with your granddaughter. You'll never speak to her again._

_The Doctor knows he will not kill her. He cannot look his own granddaughter in the eyes and shoot her. He knows he cannot. He tries to reassure her as he runs through the possibilities in his mind. Tries to soothe her, as he looks for some route of escape. But Rassilon is clever, and Rassilon knows the Doctor better than that._

_Two regeneration cycles later, the Doctor pulls the trigger._

The Doctor pushed the memory aside, trying to find somewhere safe, somewhere hidden. He needed to find… something. What? What did he need to find? Something, he knew that for sure. Or was it someone? Perhaps he's supposed to be looking for himself. He's not sure anymore. He cannot think in the darkness.

_—You have many friends back on Earth, says Rassilon. I know you've been avoiding that particular planet. You don't want to bring Earth into the war. You are hoping the Daleks will avoid it._

_—Susan is dead, says the Doctor. There is nothing left for me to lose._

_—Ian and Barbara, says Rassilon. Ben and Polly. Sarah Jane. Jo Grant. They all have children and grandchildren of their own back on Earth. They are your friends, Doctor. You promised to defend them. They trust you so completely. Are you really going to let their children die?_

_—What have you done? The Doctor demands._

_—You said you'd let every grandchild on Gallifrey die, says Rassilon. I just chose a different planet._

_—I'll stop this, says the Doctor. I'll go to Earth myself and stop whatever it is that you've done._

_—But you can't, Doctor, says Rassilon. The Daleks follow you wherever you go. The moment you step onto that planet, the Daleks will invade. You'll be dragging your precious Earth straight into Hell._

_The Doctor stops. He is breathing hard. He feels the tension in his limbs._

_—They'll fight you, says the Doctor. The humans won't let you take their children away. They'll fight you tooth and nail to make sure you leave them alone._

_—Oh, Doctor, says Rassilon with a cold laugh. You really don't know them at all, do you?_

_The Doctor spins around, facing Rassilon again, that familiar cold fury creeping down his spine._

_—I'll give you a chance to stop it, says Rassilon. I'll start nice and slow. Just a dozen. A dozen children. If you don't tell me, I'll up the ante. Ten percent. Then twenty. Thirty five. We'll see how long it takes before you break._

_—Someone will stop you, says the Doctor._

_—No one can, says Rassilon. No one except for you. All you need to do is tell me._

_—No._

_—Tell me, Doctor! Tell me where she is!_

_—No! shouts the Doctor. No, no, no, forever no! You can destroy everything and everyone I've ever loved. You can tear my hearts out one by one and throw them into the Eye of Harmony. But I will never tell you, Rassilon! I will never, ever tell!_

_Silence._

_—Activate CIA Project Four-Five-Six, says Lord Rassilon._

Somewhere, he could hear a voice calling to him. Eywa—or was it her? It was so very far away, smothered by the dark, smothered by the memories. He didn't want to die, he didn't want to regenerate—there was still so much he wanted to see with these eyes. But he could feel himself falling away, falling to pieces, bit by bit. He was beginning to feel it, the familiar tingle in his limbs that came just before a regeneration cycle. He tried to pull it back, tried to slow it down. He tried to save himself. But it was dark. It was so, so dark.

_—Do you remember how you found your Eywa? Alone and afraid, an abandoned child who had lost her family? I found that family, Doctor. I've snatched them out of time, and would you like to know how they died? You killed them, Doctor. They died because you wouldn't tell me where you'd hidden her!_

He could see Leela's dead body on the ground. He could see Flavia hacked to bits by the Horde of Travesties. He could see Andred screaming as he was consumed by the Could've Been King, his Tardis dismembered by the Army of Meanwhiles and Neverweres.

Galaxies collapsing, the Skaro Degredations, the constant screams of the dying and the lost.

_—You can trust me, Doctor. I'm on your side._

The feeling of the frayed timeline burning at his senses. The nauseous, gut-wrenching spin that signified the uncreation of another world. Davros and the Nightmare Child. The smell of sulfur and blood at Arcadia.

_—Just tell me where she is, Doctor._

Darkness, nothing but darkness.

_—Where is the Key?_

The feeling of falling, the feeling of dying. Grabbing for something—anything—to hang on to, but there is nothing left to stop his fall.

_—WHERE IS EYWA?_

And suddenly, someone has caught his hand in hers. Someone has found him, lit his way through the blackness. He looks up, and he doesn't understand how she is here, in his mind, shining so brightly just the way she did back on the Game Station.

Rose.

She has her hand in his, and they fit together so perfectly, just the way they always did. And she looks in his eyes and gives him that smile, the one he remembers so well because she used it just for him. It is no longer dark, now that she is here; someone has bent the laws of time and space to bring just this small bit of her here, inside his mind, the Bad Wolf, to bring him out from the darkness.

He can feel the shadows retreating from his mind. He can feel his thoughts and memories sliding back into place, his consciousness emerging from its prison. The war melts away as he looks into her eyes, the eyes of his Rose. She has never been more beautiful.

He tries to tell her the words he never could, but before he can, she silences him with only a thought. She stares into his eyes, and reaches out to touch his cheek…

The Doctor sat up with a sudden gasp, a gale of wind blowing against his face and the sound of the Na'vi chanting in his ears. He looked around, at Neytiri's wide eyes and open mouth, at Jake's dumb expression. At the woodsprites a few feet away as they turned brown, shriveled, and dropped out of the air like stones. At the viperwolves that had been circling the tree, now gasping for breath as they lay, dying, on the ground.

He could see it through the thick veil of night, could feel it spreading across the planet. Plants wilting and dying, their warm, glowing tendrils extinguished as they crumpled to the ground. The Na'vi who had gathered slumping over, dissolving into the soil, their bodies transforming to dust before his eyes. Jake and Neytiri cried out, but they couldn't move. The Doctor knew why. They were being protected by the shield the Doctor had erected around the tree. They couldn't move, because if they moved, they would die.

The Doctor knew what had happened. Eywa had used the Key to summon the Bad Wolf—used it to save his life. But he had warned her about this, about how the power would overload the temporal shielding, and she wouldn't be able to close the connection. She'd blow time open; she'd unlock the war. He'd told her, so often, but she had done what the humans had only threatened to do.

She had opened Pandora's box.

But she was clever, his young lady, more clever than the humans who had drilled into her surface and inadvertently released Davros. Eywa had already computed the energy she needed to close the connection, to keep the war from breaking loose. She had worked out the sums, and she understood where she could find that power. She could find it in the psionic matrix that she had grown on her surface—the very essence of her soul. If she gave her life, she could preserve the universe.

"No," said the Doctor, struggling to get to his feet. "I won't let you," he gritted out. "I can't go through this again." He looked at his hands, at the swirling tendrils of regeneration energy that were already starting to dissipate. Temporal energy. He thought about where he was, in the Hallelujah Mountains—a temporal nexus point, a carefully constructed intersection point for thousands of potential timelines. Here, in this one spot, in this one location, anything and everything was possible. If he was lucky, if he was very, very lucky, he knew he could do it. He could bring them all back, could save himself and Eywa and all the Na'vi, could keep the war locked up and keep the universe intact. The Doctor took a deep breath, imbedded his mind into Eywa's psionic matrix along every coexisting timeline, and triggered the regeneration process.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jake understands.

**Pandora, 5.5 Dash Seven in the Days of Centauri**

For generations afterwards, the Na'vi would sing songs of that day. They sang of the Time Walker who shone like the heart of the sun, the legendary Tai'Nandi who brought Eywa back to life. And although the Na'vi did not have the vocabulary needed to explain the complex temporal anomalies exploited on that day, they all understood the gift that the Time Walker had given to Eywa. He hadn't just saved the Na'vi from death, nor had he simply returned Eywa to them. He had restored Eywa back to the way she was before, the way she had been in legend, the way she had been before the War that Never Happened.

Neytiri loved to sing this song to the children of the Omaticayan clan. She loved to watch their faces as she told them how Tai'Nandi had turned back time, how she and Jakesully had watched events undone, had seen lives unlost, had felt the power and the beauty of Eywa resonating across creation as Tai'Nandi brought her back to life.

She sung this song for them now, at the Festival of Time, that festival when the Na'vi gather together to sing the Songs of Never.

"What happened then?" asked the children.

"Tai'Nandi got back into his Tardis, and stepped back into time," said Neytiri.

"And he told the Na'vi that we never had to worry about the RDA again," said Jake. "Because the first thing he was going to do was to go back to Earth and dismantle the RDA."

The humans who had chosen to stay on Pandora cheered at this. Jake had invited them to the festival. This was partly because he hoped that, by joining the festivities, they would better understand the Na'vi, but it was mostly because he knew everyone loved a good party.

"But we must always remember the value of life," Neytiri added, shooting Jake a warning look. "Not just that of the tawtute and Na'vi, but that of every living being in all of creation. Eywa is the Guardian of Life, and we are the guardians of Eywa. That is our responsibility."

"But if Tai'Nandi made it so that all those events never happened, then why is it important to tell them?" asked the children.

Norm scratched his head. "Now there's a fair point," he said. "Why do the Na'vi keep telling stories about things that they themselves admit never happened? You ever work that out, Jake?"

"But they did happen," said Jake. "I remember them. They sort of… happened and then unhappened. The rest of the universe might not know, but we do. That's why we have to sing them, to make sure that they are never forgotten."

"But we were on the planet, too," said Norm. "And none of us humans remember any of this. Why do you remember? What proof do you have that any of this stuff is real?"

"Because…" Jake faltered, and then something clicked in his mind. "Because these events are a part of Eywa," he said. "And we are also a part of Eywa. And it is Eywa who lets us remember."

Jake looked over to Neytiri. Her eyes were shining.

"Yes," she said. "You finally understand."


End file.
